It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I was able to clock out of work a little early and was feeling fresh. I tried hard to objectively evaluate my condition and decide if running was the smart thing to do or if I should rest one more day. I admit that I'm feeling goaded into trying to run, as I watch my weekly mileage plan slip away and I worry about my hard-fought conditioning fading. I'm pretty sure that's a poor rationale, but I think I made a prudent call anyway, and don't think I am risking a relapse. Time will tell, but today I still feel good and even ran well again this morning.
The last time I did the Lake Miramar loop, I worked on my pace discipline, trying to maintain a slow 8:30 to 9:00 per mile pace. This time, I put a little tempo into it, and finished the course in 37:30, which equates to a 7:34-mile over the hair-under-5-mile distance. I had fun measuring my pace against a nice, fluid runner who stayed about 200-300m ahead of me the whole way until the last ¾ of a mile, at which point I began to gain on him (though I couldn't quite catch him before the end). My HR never ran away and held pretty steadily around my threshold level of 160. I’m starting to get a little suspicious about 158-160 being my lactate threshold. It was “comfortably hard” as a tempo run should be, but I wasn’t exceeding my “ventilation threshold” since I could still talk in short sentences. If anything, it was my legs that were feeling a tad weary. It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t try a 10K at max effort and see what I can do, without worrying if my HR creeps up into the high 160s. I'm going to have to work that into my schedule.
This morning, I felt no lingering “delayed onset” muscle soreness. In fact, I felt rather refreshed. Today was also the morning of Maranatha’s open track, for students and family to run “laps for sticks.” I’d been looking forward to running on the soft oval for weeks, and had today scheduled as a short tempo run or possibly 880 intervals or mile repeats. I decided to just try to get as many laps in as possible without doing myself in, even though I’d just run a similar workout the day before. I wound up cranking out 16 laps or 4 miles in just under 30 minutes, which was faster even than yesterday’s Miramar pace. Average pace was 7:19-mile covering 4 miles in 29:20. Again, HR was very similar, hovering around 160 for most of the run. Unlike yesterday, I spent a little time warming up and cooling down, which added another couple of miles to my total daily distance.
That puts me at 24 miles for the week, which is about 3 behind where I had planned to be before taking on a 17+ mile run this weekend. I’m still contemplating whether I should stick with that plan or not. If I do, it’ll be on Sunday morning rather than Saturday. Even though yesterday and today were short runs, the intensity was a little high; high enough to call them “hard;” so I suppose it’s wise to put in a light workout first, creating a little bit of buffer between hard runs.
If I do decide to attempt the 17+ miler on Sunday, I haven’t yet decided on a route. I’ve been scouting the feasibility of a circuit around Lake Hodges, and I finally confirmed a passage from 4S Ranch to Del Dios Hwy, albeit it crosses “no trespassing” warnings. But now, I’m worried that there isn’t a safe segment that’ll let me get from the dam to the area of the San Dieguito River Park near Hernandez’s Hideaway. From what I can tell, Lake Dr. during that stretch is closed to construction traffic only, making Del Dios Hwy itself the only connection possible. That’s too scary for me. There’s a bike lane, but I don’t think I want to risk it. I’d have to run on the right-hand side of the road, too, with traffic coming up from behind. So, I’m pretty firm now that the complete circuit will have to be a future run, sometime later in 2010 when they finally open Lake Dr. up again.
An option could be to run an out-and-in, following the Lake route around to some point that is half the distance I want to cover and then retrace my path back to home. That actually might not be such a bad idea. If I were to do that, I’d probably go counter-clockwise, crossing the footbridge north of Rancho Bernardo going and coming. A big chunk of that is trail running, which I’m finding I like a lot better than sidewalk running.
The other choice I’ve been imagining is to run from home to Torrey Pines along the bike path that parallels Ted Williams Parkway. It looks like a pretty easy route and is mostly flat or downhill. That’d be a one-way trip, which means Joan would have to come get me later in the morning.
The third idea I had was to run down to Artesian Rd and cross into Rancho Santa Fe south of the Crosby Estates and then running up into the village, grabbing something to drink at the little market there and then heading back home along the same route. Again, that would require “trespassing” and I’m not absolutely certain that the San Dieguito River is passable since I haven’t scouted it. It looks like it is on the satellite map. (Looking at it with Bing maps "birds eye" view, I'd say that definitely looks passable.)
This weekend will conclude Week 4 of 18 on the road to the marathon. The race is 100 days away from today. I think I’m on a pretty good track, this week’s flu-ish hiccup notwithstanding.
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